


Aftershock

by Dobbys_Sock_7812



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 03:40:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2009568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dobbys_Sock_7812/pseuds/Dobbys_Sock_7812
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there was one thing John was sure of, it was that Sherlock could not possibly kill Mary. His faith in the man was incontrovertible. There was also the fact that he jumped off a building three years ago. Death was about as concrete an alibi as possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aftershock

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everybody. So this is my latest stab at a fic (and also my first stab at a Sherlock one) and I hope you enjoy it. I will update at least once every two weeks.  
> Happy reading :)

The building panic and the unbearable turmoil building to a crescendo before devolving into blind grief. The feeling of hopelessness was inescapable and all consuming; being unable to do anything but watch as the unthinkable unfurled before him.

“SHERLOCK!”

And all he knew was falling.

**

John is not sure what exactly drives him back to Baker Street. Years later when he reflects back on this defining moment, he will swear resolutely that it was an accident. That he never meant to make that left turn. But it happens nonetheless, and John has no idea of the dent it will make in his specially contained life of caution and loneliness.

He takes an early finish at the surgery on that Wednesday afternoon before what he hereafter referred to as ‘the incident’. The sun is high in the sky but the icy breeze of winter is enough to make John draw his thick coat tighter to him. Crossing the street, he navigates his feet carefully through the compact ice as he makes his way to the Starbucks to meet up with a freshly-out-of-rehab Harry.

Okay so expensive coffee shops and meeting with Harry for that matter, are not exactly John’s ‘thing’. But his therapist thinks he is borderline depressed, and that his reclusive status is going to tip him over the edge sooner rather than later. John disagrees; he believes the company of others is the enemy right now.

Because no matter how much he once enjoyed surrounding himself with loved ones, the only person whose company John wants is the only person who can no longer give it to him. So now all he feels is an unbearable flame of disappointment flare up in his chest until it aches too much to be out in the world again. That is how meeting with Harry feels, though the meeting is not without its merits. He has missed her.

At first John cannot see her. The throng of chattering students flitting between the long queue at the counter and back to their friends is thick enough to block his view of most tables. But he eventually finds her, sat in the most secluded corner she could find, with two mugs of coffee in front of her. John almost cracks a smile at that, because the last time they met here she laughed as he looked at the menu, blinked several times, and asked her which fancily-named option ‘coffee’ was. 

Her ebony hair that contrasts so much with John’s ash blonde is drawn back into a tight ponytail with not a hair out of place. And her outfit comprises of a red jumper and black jeans. There is so much neatness to her appearance that it almost seems as though she is trying too hard. Which, John realises with a slight fluttering of emotion, that it is probably for his benefit. Anything she can possibly do to show him how together she is.

Perhaps there is a subtle hint directed at him in there somewhere.

Something along the lines of ‘hey, I’m your screwed up sister, and if I can get my shit together, so can you’.

He can almost hear her saying it. One of the next things John notices as he makes his way through the crowd is that she no longer wears a ring on her finger, like she did the last time they met. And John makes a mental note to ask her about it.

There is a tiny part of him that actually cares about the answer to those questions, but mostly he wants to divert the attention away from himself. No, what he mostly wants is for everyone to leave him the hell alone and to get back to his flat. 

It takes her some time to see him approaching (probably something to do with the ridiculously large sunglasses that cover half of her face). But when she does her face splits into a warm smile and she stands immediately, arms outstretched to hug him. Obediently, John wanders into her arms and hugs her back tightly. It is awkward, because for all John is affectionate, they do not do this often. John cannot even recall the last time he hugged his sister without having to contend with the smell of alcohol. But there is a world of difference in circumstances since then. And he thinks that she can feel it too, so the hug does not last long, and when she releases him she sits down without even looking at him. 

This time last week, Harry sat and cried out her sniveling apologies which John did not appreciate at all. Because really all he was capable of dealing with at the minute was small talk, and even that he detested.

“Hey Harry,” he breathes taking the seat opposite her.

She looks up at him and smiles again, and all of a sudden the ridiculous sunglasses bother him even more than they did upon his arrival. 

“Harry will you take them off?” he almost snaps, but just manages to keep his voice at a neutral level. “It’s the middle of winter and this isn’t exactly the most well lit place,” 

Her jaw tightens, but she sighs by way of surrender, and removes the glasses. She immediately stares down at the table, her eyes trailing anything that is not John. But it makes no difference.  
Though she hides it with make-up, the red around her eyes is unmistakable.

“You've been drinking,” John states, his eyes boring holes into her skin.

Harry sniffles, and rather than feeling sympathy, John becomes irritable. Harry seems to sense this, since she finally raises her head to look at him. And John’s anger lessens slightly because he realises this one attempt at making a deduction was so catastrophically wrong. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and despite the flatness of his voice, she seems to know he means it.

Harry sniffs again, and John looks away as her eyes well up with fresh tears which spill over to retrace the recent paths on her cheeks.

“Harry, what happened?” he asks.

“No,” she says, wiping at her face. “The whole point of us being here is to talk about you and I am going to make damn well sure that happens,” 

“What?” John asks, momentarily taken aback.

“Please,” Harry says, unable to keep herself from sounding bitter. “We both know the only reason you’re here is because of your bloody therapist. So go on and talk about your feelings. That’s more important,”

Her sarcasm hits John like a slap to the face and seems to momentarily break through his icy exterior. Steeling himself slightly, he covers her outstretched hand in his.

“No. It isn’t more important,” He tells her. “I am so sick of everyone focusing on me. Fuck my therapist. I want to hear about your week,” 

She actually giggles, and flips her hand over under his to give it a small squeeze.

“Now there is the John I remember. Self last, everyone else first,”

John sighs, and removes his hand to take a sip of his coffee. Harry retracts her hand and takes a sip of her own cup. It is cold now, the conversation having distracted her from the caffeine. For a moment she stares at the spot on the table where he had clasped her hand—such a comforting gesture that she could not remember ever receiving from him. He had been sceptical when she checked herself into rehab, but he had supported her all the same, and had even said he was proud of her for sticking it out. But is support all but went out the window after Sherlock—

“You’ve been so selfish lately John,” she says suddenly, her voice barely above a whisper.

He sighs because he has no idea how to respond to that. 

“My best friend died,” he reminds her in a subtly patronising tone.

“Two years ago,” she quips, and then, realising she must sound insensitive, amends her words with. “I understand how you must be feeling but don’t you think you should be trying to turn your life around at this point? I have been out of rehab for a year and a half and you wouldn’t even agree to see me until last week,” 

She utters the last part with a hint of resentment. 

“Harry I don’t think you do understand,” he says through gritted teeth with as much patience as possible.

“You think I don’t understand how it feels to lose someone you love?” she hisses, holding up her ring free hand. “To have someone just abandon you because things got a little difficult?” 

“Harry,” John says softly. “You know that’s not what I meant. He was my best friend, I-,”

“But that’s not just it is it?” she replies scathingly. “I would wager you have lost plenty of ‘best friends’ over the past two years, and it doesn’t seem to me like you give a shit about the loss of them,” 

John feels the imaginary quotation marks and fears what she is getting at.

“I had one best friend. The rest of my friends were friends because of him. And Mike didn’t even try to-,”

“And tell me John, would you have let him in if he had tried?” she asks scathingly.

“I don’t know,” he sighs. “Maybe I would have,”

“Forgive me if I don’t believe you,”

And the silence ensues again. John takes the spare moment to finish his coffee and to chew on Harry’s words, but apparently his sister is not quite finished yet, because after several minutes, she speaks again.

“And I wouldn’t believe the others haven’t tried,” she almost whispers.

John has the decency to hang his head, and he can almost see the pinprick of satisfaction swell inside Harry. She is trying to get a rise out of him, and he doubts that even she has no idea just how close he is.

“He was different,” John states, angry at the subtle breaking of his voice.

At this, Harry seems to soften slightly. The words are on her tongue but she dares not say them because this is the most progress they have made in the four meetings they have had so far. 

“And so was she,” Harry replies, smiling sadly. “But where is the sense in waiting around for something hopeless?” she asks pointedly, arching an eyebrow. 

And this time John takes the hint. He wants to do better and to be better, but promising Harry that he will be, and actually doing so are two very different things. 

“And she couldn’t handle you at your worst,” he says. “In my opinion you are better off,”

“But that is where you are wrong,” Harry reflects. “She couldn’t handle me at my best. She enjoyed me at my worst—an alcoholic invalid who was entirely dependent on her. Dumb bitch couldn’t stand the fact that I only loved her and didn’t need her,”

The look John gives Harry at that moment is one between admiration and a strange sense of nostalgia. Memories of another person who thrived on being needed. Another finished cup of coffee later and they were saying their goodbyes, but only after John promises to come round for tea the following Saturday. 

She offers to put him in a cab (as if he can’t do that on his own), which he refuses, preferring instead to walk home. John walks down the street with a lighter heart. He can feel himself coming back to the world as his relationship with Harry becomes a tiny bit stronger with each meeting. But he is not there yet, and he hopes she has the patience to deal with that, because he is volatile. 

The slightest thing may send him back to where he started. 

And that is where we find John in the present, utterly perplexed as he gazes up at the door of 221B. A surprise, you see, because he hasn’t lived there for one year, eleven months, two weeks and five days.

Not that he’s been counting. 

John did not mean to come here in the slightest, yet it is hard to call this an accident when he lives several miles in the other direction. Never quite sure what compels him to do so, John decides he would quite like to go inside. He walks towards the door, past Lestrade getting out of his police car, ready to announce that there had been a fourth suicide. He isn’t even in the house and there are already ghosts—perhaps this is not such a good idea after all, he thinks to himself. 

Taking a steadying breath, John can’t escape the dizzy feeling settling in. Instead of knocking like he means to, his raised right hand rests against the door and he leans on it for support while he composes himself—

Only the door does not support his weight. He falls right through it. Through the shock, John manages to grab onto the coat hangers for support. Heart thumping wildly, he turns back to look at the door and evaluate his options. 

A squatter perhaps? There is only one way to find out.

Steeling himself, John puts his foot on the stairs for the first time in two years. Against the new, sane John’s better judgement, he walks straight up the stairs as if Sherlock’s ghost has grabbed his hand and led him there. Upon reaching the threshold to the living room, everything surrounding John mutes. For a moment there are no mug rings on the dark coffee table, there is no sunlight streaming through the window and there is no distant thrum of a washing machine in mid-cycle. 

There is only Sherlock lying on the sofa, facing the wall. Sherlock playing the violin at the window and doing experiments at the dining table. The very essence of Sherlock is so intricately entwined in every detail of the flat that for a moment John can’t breathe. Because for just one fraction of a second, John forgets that Sherlock is not going to burst through the kitchen doors with a blowtorch in one hand and an eyeball in the other.

It takes John a while to realise his breathing is ragged, but once he does he clings to it (and the doorframe for support), and uses it to slowly pull himself back into the world. And once he does, all he feels is mortified as certain aspects of the flat come back to his brain.

Washing machine in mid cycle. 

Mug rings on the coffee table. 

Someone lives here. And he had just walked right in.

John curses his own stupidity. Of course someone bloody lives here. A prime spot like this was probably snatched up a few weeks after he moved out. He does, for a second, feel a little put out and resentful at the fact that Mrs Hudson would let someone that wasn’t Sherlock live here. And then he doesn’t, because in fairness, she would have to be an idiot to refuse the money this place would sweep up. 

With bated breath, he stumbles backwards, hoping to make a quiet exit. No such luck, he thinks as his elbow cracks his elbow off the door frame and the curse words slip out before he can even think about stopping him.

“Who’s there?” a voice called immediately.

Sharp, baritone, excruciatingly familiar.

To John it feels like a sick joke, as though the walls are talking to him. 

His eyes snap to the doorway to what was once Sherlock’s bedroom and is now the origin of the voice. Heart banging against his ribcage, John stays silent. He knows he should run and knows he should have listened to the screaming instinct that warns him that to stay here would only bring trouble. Yet John’s legs have become lead and he can do nothing but wait with bated breath.  
Suddenly a clang from the kitchen draws John’s eyes away from the bedroom door to the source of the noise. At the same time he sees a figure rush past him which diverts his attention again. And for a few moments he is completely rooted to the spot, his mouth open in a silent scream.

Because although it was a fleeting glimpse, he would always swear that the figure skirting in his peripheral had a head of curly black hair.

Eventually, he regains his bearings and moves towards the open window, which is the only possible way the mystery stranger could have escaped, what with John blocking the door and all. John looks down at the street below and as far out as he can see. The stretch of the city he can see is alive with activity, and John is not surprised that he sees no sign of the escapee.

 _Of course there isn’t,_ he reasons with himself. _I’m looking for a dead man._

And the disappointment swells inside him, accompanied by a strange feeling of loss. Of course it was a bloody hallucination. He grips the window frame so tightly his knuckles turn white and doesn’t try to stop his shoulders from stooping or his head from hanging. 

 

“I’ve called the police,” 

The steady, female voice resonating from the kitchen door is what finally makes John move. He turns to face the woman, grasping at feeble explanations in his already scrabbled mind, but once he looks at her, all excuses die on his tongue and are lost in the long, slow breath he lets out.

A blonde—tiny and slender with round eyes. In her small fists she clutches a frying pan and it is raised slightly above her head as though she is ready to swing.

“There’s no need for that,” John says slowly, his hands raised in surrender. “I’m leaving now. This was all a giant mistake, and I’m going. I apologise; I won’t bother you again,”

“You accidentally walked into my house?” she asks, a cold lilt to her voice as she quirks a delicate eyebrow.

John sighs and looks at the floor.

“I know it sounds silly but-,”

“Yes it does, and an explanation wouldn’t go amiss,” 

She doesn’t sound afraid. In fact her voice is now full of her uncontained curiosity, and he is sure the ghost of a smile graced her lips for just a second when he turned to face her before. And for reasons quite beyond his control, John feels compelled to give her an explanation.

At least part of an explanation anyway. 

“I used to live here you see,” he starts. “I was probably the last person to live here before you,” 

There is a moment where the woman seems set to lower the pan as her brow furrows in apparent confusion.

“I thought the last person to live here was dead,”

“I was his roommate,” John replies blankly, pushing down the flare of irritation at having been forgotten again.

“Oh… you were his blogger?” she asks, comprehension dawning on her features. 

John nods, not looking at her but past her. When it becomes apparent that John is not going to speak again, the woman fills the gap of silence.

“And you were facing your demons?” she asks, not unkindly, but there is a note of amusement to her tone that John is not sure he likes. 

“Something like that,” John replies, half truthfully. 

She laughs then, and when he glares at her, she covers her mouth with a hand and attempts to compose herself.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s just… well… did it not occur to you that by now somebody else might live here?” 

“No,” John murmurs. “Mrs Hudson was like his Mother. I never thought she would be able to sell so soon,”

“It has been a couple of years though. I haven’t lived here that long,” she reasons.

John flinches then, because throughout all this time, he has never once entertained the thought that the others may have dealt with Sherlock’s death better than him.

“Who’s Mrs Hudson?” 

The voice broke John out of his reverie and he looks back up dazedly.

“The Landlady,” John supplies, blinking. 

She frowns.

“Oh. Well not anymore… I’m renting this flat from my brother,”

And John feels slightly winded. Mrs Hudson had just up and left? Underneath all the confusion John can’t help but feel slightly betrayed that she would leave without telling him. Although he realises that it would be unfair to expect a phone call, considering he has never bothered to keep in touch with her. John had severed his ties to that world long ago, but right now, standing once again in the heart of it, he begins to think that it may not be as easy as he thought. 

“You haven’t really called the police have you?” John asks, although it isn’t spoken like a question.

She laughs, shaking her head.

“Well I really should be going now,” he sighs. “I’ve pestered you long enough,” 

He is about to leave, but there is a small nagging feeling in his brain, and for as many times that day, he decides to listen to it.

“I’m John Watson by the way,” he says warmly.

“I know,” Of course she did.

“What’s your name?” He asks.

“I’m Mary. Mary Morstan,”


End file.
